She had become a shadow of herself. Like a graceful entity to imprint the town name she wandered as an apparition. A phantom of herself, her soul.

There was so much distance in her eyes. Valleys of empty glass and broken sunlight those molten suns were.

The black river of her hair had become an overflowing offering of silken temptation to curl now past her hips. The cold meant nothing to her when her soul... her heart... felt the void.

Such a distance. She felt the deep pit of a void spreading out within her soul and she had no understanding of the reasoning or why.

This sadness, this somber empty sensation was not her way. She had no reason to feel this way... and yet ... the presence of it within her was unmistakable.

Mourning Hours.

That was how it felt.

This was not the mourning of one that had felt she had loved and lost, or lost and loved... but something... more infinite.

Something one could not so easily recover from.

The snow had mixed with the dirt way of Ghost Town.

The place ever so alive even as death seemed to harbor on the sidelines, in the streets, on the edges of every moment.

Molten golds caught a glisten of ebon amongst crisp white and tarnished dirt brown.

A solitaire raven feather.

The understanding sank past her flesh, far past her bones. Struck her to the core and she shuddered.

A glance over her shoulder as her fingers curled that feather protectively in her palm. Kept safe.

Her steps so silent, the warmth of her nature spilled out from her as ever desert heat.

She was ever the Goldmine, but sometimes the mourning hours left her feeling like nothing more... then the grave digger of a soul.

She had returned to the Hall when the chaos had eased away. The night had been nothing more then a reminder that the bitter would always come with the sweet.

The scent of blood assaulted her yet she moved as smooth as a graceful shadow in the dark. Taking up her clothes and the mask of Bastet. All gathered as her thumb stroked over that fiery token Anya had graced her with.

Her Sun Prince and Ember Princess.

She rose before swiftly exiting the night. The Masquerade was not as the one she had attended before.

Words had twisted like violent knives in her soul. A moment where she felt she could not breathe when she heard of the loss of a desert born she had a near sibling fondness for.

Then there a longing in the Blue. For a moment she had been enraptured, caught in between the Burn of the Sun and the Soothing Balm of the Sky.

Ever drawn and pulled.

She had danced to escape the pain, grateful that the mask of Bastet would shield and cup the tears that would spill and fall. Had danced with the Sun Prince till she was breathless.

Then there was the tango and she was searching, taken with a memory to find him once more. The Raven.

To invoke a memory once again. A small thread of joy.

Instead the night had erupted in violence and blood.

Heart torn as if in a savage rendering of claws to leave her spirit wounded she had disappeared in the night.

Molten suns to catch on blue and linger there in a soft understanding, a quiet longing. Another look over the Flames that had begun to burn for her.

She fled into the cold of the night feeling nothing more then that desolation that knocked her to her knees when she entered Ghost Town.

A faint sounding cry screamed out into the night, all that pain and torment of her tortured spirit would tear through the silence of Ghost Town.

The quiet heartbreaking wail as she clutched that costume and mask in her hands, holding tightly to both as she broke down where no one could find her... where no one would know... and no one could ever take that pain away.